Chapter Seven - Fitting a few pieces...
Sitting on the edge of the bed in my room, I found myself feeling such a deep hate at the silence the middle of the night was bringing to me. It hung around me like a heavy darkened drape, and that just made me feel more frustrated. Even wearing my favourite nightie had done nothing to help
The digital clock on the bedside glowed with it’s soft red glow and read that it was just past one in the morning, something that my sleep deprived brain did not want to know. I rubbed my eyes and groaned, I really did not want to deal with another sleepless night... I had enough of them in the past weeks.
It was pretty much past two days which had passed, since having the small ‘run in’ with Louise and the sleazy looking man who she had been with in the art area. Plainly speaking, it has been two days of pure hell. I was now beyond frustrated at not being able to let things go so I could get some sleep. No matter what I did or tried, it did not work.... it felt like if it was pushing me almost to a state of madness.
What that girl had been doing in the class room with the very scruffy man, not to mention what she had brazenly and so matter-of-fact told me right after... kept playing over in my head. I could not focus on anything else but those few moments, which always ended up haunting me into my dreams when I finally closed my eyes.
Extremely frustrated was a very kind way of describing what this all was filling me with. In short, it was the reason that I have not gotten but a few very short hours of sleep in the last roughly forty-eight. I was wanting nothing more than to slip off into sleep, and let my mind finally stop all of it’s gymnastics.
I had already ended up trying anything that I could think of to help myself get some sleep over the course of it. Counting sheep did nothing but frustrate me, soft music from my radio did the same and I hated drinking warm milk so that was out of the question to try. It was now official... my mind was unable to reach unconsciousness.
Sitting there on the that first night, I finally brought out that letter that Ashley had left me, and which I had stashed away... something that I had to admit, I had been thinking about reading for awhile but had stubbornly put off. I opened it and shakily read it, hoping that seeing Ashley’s side of things, would end up helping me... I was out of other ideas at that point.
That letter started the two days and nights in which I would read that note over and over again throughout the night... to the point of memorizing every single word of it.. It ended up being a mistake to be reading that letter, it just ended up causing a whole lot more stress to jam into my all too fatigued brain and pushed the slim chance of sleep I was clutching at even farther away.
The letter held the exact same things that the unabashed Louise had told me that one morning...yet in the girl’s handwriting, the details showed confusion and uncertainty which Ashley was going through within herself. The words on that page also seemed to also show that the girl had a great deal of remorse, and was fighting to say exactly what she was feeling towards me... and they were clearly speaking of how confused she was over the strange hold Louise seemed to have on her.
I shuttered each time I would read that part over, the pull of all those written emotions made me want to cry right along with her. I could feel those emotions, and identify with her confusion she was having... and wished that I could be strong enough to come out and tell her what I had seen, and what Louise had said about her. I hated myself at that moment, because that I could not make myself become brave enough to speak out.
Reading it over like I was doing, I saw between the lines that Ashley had wrote. The heavy handed and completely controlling hand of Louise was so clearly evident through the girl’s writing. You could tell that she had wrote this out of the presence of Louise, but she also fought her own inner turmoil as she did.
The cocky short haired girl clearly had a hold of Ashley, just like she had so smugly boasted to me that day. Seeing through some of that, the girl’s grip could not hid the depth of Ashley’s sadness and the mounting confusion that had been brought out either. It was becoming very clear just how Louise was manipulating the pretty blonde...even though Ashley’s words on the page never came right out and said it.
No matter how many times I went over and read Ashley’s letter.... It really did seem that this very evil girl with the overly self-righteous attitude, had both Ashley and myself backed into a corner. Ashley by choice, and me by threats and the fact that I could not prove things even if I did speak up.
That first night after seeing Louise and the man, I had only gotten about two hours of sporadic sleep that time, and had basically walked through the next day in a total fog. Today had been more of the same as I just went along with life. Now as I just had been laying her for a few hours, the silence of the dorms had not brought me any sleep.
I was beginning to feel as if I was in a strange type of limbo...and I was starting to feel more and more that I just might be going a little crazy at the same time. I needed some luck or something to come for me.
" Stop it!!" I said to myself more than once, trying to make all of the stuff flying around in my head to quit.
My luck had really now turned literally soured... my own brain was stubbornly continuing to churn away. I had no idea why my one brain was doing this to me, but I was unable to stop any of it.
I stood up from the bed, tired of just sitting there and mulling over things without an end... finding that just staying still was letting my mind do what it was that I was trying to stop. I could feel the exhaustion throughout my body deepening.... I needed to sleep, and needed it very soon.
I just began to wander around the darkness of my room, pacing on the small throw rug that was there. I was hoping that doing this might help sooth my racing mind once and for all, but even after just a few minutes of doing that... it was clear my mind was not going to stop. It was getting to that point that I wanted to scream.
As I continued to pace the floor, I found that I was now letting myself truly think things through now. I had been fighting it for many hours throughout the days, but I hoped that in letting it just fly with it... it may just settle me enough to actually close my eyes and get that much needed sleep I craved.
It was then, that I discovered my mind just might have had a purpose in keeping going like it had been doing. I began to notice that my mind had been focussing on one part of that little incident I had blundered on to... my brain was constantly playing that part more than the others. It was weird.
" Dear God... Help me..." I whispered rubbing my eyes with my palms, hoping that some divine intervention might get my mind to stop.
The part that kept playing in my head like some broken DVD... was of that creepy janitor stepping away from Louise after ‘finishing’ with her. I could see him in my mind then pulling up his pants and simply walking off like as if nothing had ever happened. That single image now was haunting me so much, but the question was why was that little fraction of what had gone on bothering me like that.. It was so odd how that memory seemed to just sit there and play faster in my head.
" What is going on here..." I said to myself, seeing how my one mind was trying to tell me something.
Even after I noticed, that part was playing that part over and over again... now I was unable to explain why it was... even to myself. I kept on pacing my small room like a cat out on a midnight prowl, as that was the only thing I could really control at the moment. It was as if, something was telling me that I needed to concentrate on that moment in time.
It was a few minutes later, I stopped in the very middle of my room and looked up from just staring at the floor while I paced. It seemed as if something had suddenly dawned on me why my minds unprovoked attentions had been bothering me like this... it was beginning to come to me that I had subconsciously picked up on something which seemed was not adding up for me..
I realized that the sleazy maintenance man had turned away from the door to the hallway after having sex with Louise, and had gone to a door at the very back of the room. He never looked around or took a second glance back at Louise... but just headed directly back to that metal door at the very back of the class.
As I pondered what my mind was bringing up, I was becoming more aware of a overlooked fact. The very creepy man had not even tried to use the door that was the obvious way out. He had not even looked over when he was done his thing, simply had made a very crude comment to the naked Louise splayed out on the table and simply walked off like he had been doing nothing at all and straight back to that door. I could see him doing that so clearly, and was very sure exactly that was what he did.
Thinking on that fact a little harder still, I never did know what that door even led to, but it was very strange that the man exited that way rather than pass me in the hallway to leave. If he had needed to leave by the door I was standing at, he would have known I was there... but he never even had tried to. By his actions of just walking off, I assured myself that he never even had a clue I had been even there... and that he had already planned all along that he would be leaving the girl by that way.
I started to seriously wonder why that man had used that door to leave the way he did. I had seen some other doors like that in only a very few rooms throughout St. Tomas, but I never knew what they were for. I came to note to myself that the rooms that seemed to have the same doors were in the newer parts of the School. What were those doors leading to? That peaked my interest right there
It now was in my head... I needed to know what those doors were leading to and why that man had used that exit. I had no idea why I needed to, other than to have some real evidence to tale to both the Nuns, and Ashley. All of them really needed to know what was going on... it may sound a little selfish for me to feel that way, but I felt so strongly that they everyone needed to know.
I turned and grabbed the clothes I had on earlier, my mind now was really focussed on that damned door I was remembering in the Art classroom. It was almost as if there was a feeling that door was the key to ending this hell I was in... and it was also going to br the piece of the puzzle that would end up helping Ashley.
I did not care if Ashley and I were going to be together or not, even though I still was harboring some very strong feelings for the pretty girl. I just knew that something had to be done about the sleazy man and Louise. I wanted not to feel as if I was being bound and gagged by the words and o so subtle threats that had been spoken to me. I already knew that Louise would do anything it took, to keep her where she was.
Dressed and with my mind now focussed in, I snuck out of my room and quietly made my way downstairs. I knew what route to take to get outside without being caught, which was no secret except for the penguins it seemed. I used the way the girls would sneak out to meet up with one another and the rides they secretly had set up to go into the city and meet boys.
I was using this way to sneak my way out for a bit more of a constructive purpose than those girl did.. That made me giggle a little bit, as I made my ways through the silence that gripped the hallways.
I made it outside without a soul even seeing me, relieved that I had. Through darkness, I used the shadows where lights never reached and headed straight to my goal. That was the huge building far across the courtyard that was the school itself.